Newspapers, magazines, trade journals, books or any other type of content have existed in various forms for several hundred years. With the advent of electronic communication devices, however, it is increasingly desired by consumers to view such content using such electronic devices.
Accordingly, digital content has become popular. However, most electronic publications are generated in a single, final form, suitable for a specific purpose or device. Adapting these electronic publications to a different device entails reprocessing the original content. In some cases, point-to-point file generation (i.e., transforming the original content format to the required output format) may be utilized. If the requirements of the output format change or if an additional output format is required, these approaches may entail repeating the entire file transformation and generation process, including the quality control steps necessary to ensure that the file transformation is accurate. Additionally, since various formats have their own distinct capabilities regarding the details of the content, point to point transformation has the potential for loss of fidelity with each transformation. This is similar to the loss of fidelity in transforming graphic files from one format (e.g., tif) to another (e.g., jpg).
Digital content (such as electronic books) has historically been consumed in closed ecosystems, such as dedicated through dedicated readers (e.g. Kindles, Nooks, eReaders, etc.) or through application based reading systems such as those provided by Apple on its devices (iPhone, iPad, etc.). They are closed ecosystems in the sense that digital content is delivered to them in a proprietary format and is accessible only on that one device, or may only be accessed using a particular proprietary application on that device.
To address the limitations of such proprietary system, digital content may be provided according to a totally open concept, where such digital content may be accessed substantially anywhere with no protection of this digital content. In most cases, however, content providers may be unhappy with the arrangement as it permits unfettered distribution of such digital content and places limitations on the generation of revenue streams from such content.
What is desired then is to normalize the distribution of digital content such that the digital content can be accessed across different devices and to implement a set of security measures to protect this digital content against improper, unintended or undesired uses.